In July, in response to the City of San Bernardino’s application for a $26 million grant to cover the cost of constructing a comprehensive and full-service homeless shelter, the State of California came across with $17 million.
The following month, however, interim City Manager Rochelle Clayton, who had informed Mayor Helen Tran of the no-strings-attached funding from Sacramento but had kept from the city’s seven council members that the money was to be forthcoming, declined the state’s offer.
At this point, the members of the city council having learned of what occurred within the last few days, the question remains why Clayton did not take the final steps to actuate the grant.

FBN 20240009169
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
TMR TAX SERVICES 11223 JOSHUA CT FONTANA, CA 92337: TINA M ROMAN
Business Mailing Address: 9036 MISSION BLVD #1006 RIVERSIDE, CA 92509
The business is conducted by: AN INDIVIDUAL.
The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on: N/A.
By signing, I declare that all information in this statement is true and correct. A registrant who declares as true information which he or she knows to be false is guilty of a crime (B&P Code 179130). I am also aware that all information on this statement becomes Public Record upon filing.
/s/ TINA M. ROMAN, Owner
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 10/10/2024
I hereby certify that this copy is a correct copy of the original statement on file in my office San Bernardino County Clerk By:/Deputy J2523
Notice-This fictitious name statement expires five years from the date it was filed in the office of the county clerk. A new fictitious business name statement must be filed before that time. The filing of this statement does not of itself authorize the use in this state of a fictitious business name in violation of the rights of another under federal, state, or common law (see Section 14400 et seq., Business and Professions Code).
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on October 18 & 25 and November 1 & 8, 2024.

FBN 20240009075
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
UNA MORDIDITA 16060 ATHOL ST FONTANA, CA 92335: JESSICA A RENTERIA
Business Mailing Address: 16060 ATHOL ST FONTANA, CA 92335
The business is conducted by: AN INDIVIDUAL.
The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on: OCTOBER 1, 2025.
By signing, I declare that all information in this statement is true and correct. A registrant who declares as true information which he or she knows to be false is guilty of a crime (B&P Code 179130). I am also aware that all information on this statement becomes Public Record upon filing.
/s/ JESSICA A RENTERIA, Owner
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: October 8, 2024
I hereby certify that this copy is a correct copy of the original statement on file in my office San Bernardino County Clerk By:/Deputy K3379
Notice-This fictitious name statement expires five years from the date it was filed in the office of the county clerk. A new fictitious business name statement must be filed before that time. The filing of this statement does not of itself authorize the use in this state of a fictitious business name in violation of the rights of another under federal, state, or common law (see Section 14400 et seq., Business and Professions Code).
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on October 18 & 25 and November 1 & 8, 2024.

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The Sentinel at 6:42 p.m. today, November 5, was notified that “hundreds” of California State University Students were casting provisional ballots at the polling precinct located at the CalState Alumni Center.
The clear insinuation contained in the report was that the lion’s share of those voting at that precinct are students, many of whom are not registered to vote in San Bernardino. Most of those voting at the Alumni Center, it was said, are Democrats.
Running in the Fifth Ward in today’s November 5 race, are Kim Knaus and Henry Nickel, the two-top finishers in the March Primary. Both outdistanced the incumbent Ward 5 councilman, Ben Reynoso, who defeated Nickel in a run-off in 2024. Nickel held the Ward 5 post since 2014, when he prevailed in a special election following the 2013 resignation of then-Councilman Chas Kelley. Nickel, a Republican, was reelected in 2015 and had his term expanded to 2020 when the city switched to even-year elections.
Nickel was the top vote-getter in the 2020 primary election, but was defeated when Reynoso, a Democrat activist, cleverly moved to register Cal State San Bernardino students prior to the November 2020-run-off election. Though local elections in California are by law non-partisan, in San Bernardino County, party affiliation is a major factor in virtually all elections.
This year, Knaus, who secured stronger Democratic Party backing than did Reynoso, was able to achieve a first-place finish in the primary, while Nickel, pulling much of the traditional GOP vote, managed to capture second.
It appears that Knaus has now taken a leaf out of Reynoso’s book, and is seeking to solidify her lead in the Fifth Ward by nailing down the college student vote.
CalState San Bernardino lies within San Benardino’s Fifth Ward. The campus includes multiple dormatories.

Even as Michelle Sabino is looking confidently toward electoral victory next Tuesday, November 5, in the race to sustain herself in her appointed position on the Grand Terrace City Council, events appear poised to overtake her and other members of the Republican Central Committee in the weeks and months after the election.
Over the last three years, Sabino has come out of nowhere to take a very prominent position on the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee.
At some point in late 2001 or early 2002, she wangled an appointment to the central committee after being nominated, without fanfare, to an empty position representing the county’s Third Supervisorial District.
In San Bernardino County, the Democratic Central Committee, the primary authority for the Democratic Party in the county, elects its members based upon their residency in the various Assembly districts within the county. The San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, which rules with the backing of the state and national Republican Party within the 20,105-square mile confines of the county, elects its members based upon their residency with the five San Bernardino County supervisorial districts. In addition to their members elected directly to their respective central committees, the Democrats and Republicans also have what are termed ex officio members of their central committees, consisting of those candidates that represented their parties in the most recent elections for state and federal office. In this, the elected U.S. senator, the elected congressmen or congresswomen, the elected assemblymen or assemblywomen and the elected state senators representing San Bernardino County are designated as ex officio members of their respective parties’ central committees in San Bernardino County, just as those who vied for but lost in their efforts to represent San Bernardino County in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Congress, the Assembly and the State Senate are designated as ex officio members of their respective parties’ central committees in San Bernardino County. In most, but not all, cases, the ex officio members, engaged as they are in matters of governance that confine much of their presence to Washington, D.C. and Sacramento, designate alternates to fill in for them at the central committee meetings held in San Bernardino County. It is not clear, even to members of the Republican Central Committee in good standing, on what basis Sabino was granted membership within the central committee. A common refrain is that her application for membership was accepted by and at the inistence of Phil Cothran Sr., the chairman of Republican Central Committee since 2021. Cothran and the close-knit group of his supporters within the central committee, including other appointees to the executive committee, have resisted efforts to clarify precisely when Sabino was brought into the central committee, who sponsored and supported her acceptance as a member of the the central committee and how her elevation to the executive committee came about, although it is widely acknowledged that she is there because Cothran is, or at least was, favorably impressed with her.
Both the San Bernardino County Democratic Central Committee and the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee have their respective executive committees. Members of the executive committees have a greater degree of reach and control in shaping the policies, programs and initiatives that the central committees as a whole will pursue by their role in determining ahead of time – i.e., prior to the individual monthly meetings of the central committees – what items are to make it onto those meeting agendas for discussion and then adoption/action. While the executive committee members generally do not have – given their relatively limited numbers – the final power of decision with regard to the central committee’s policy, stance, efforts, expenditures, programs and final decisions, they have the ability to foreclose ideas ahead of time such that certain initiatives or proposals are never considered or given an opportunity to be voted upon by the full membership. Similarly, the executive committee has the power and authority of presentation with regard to proposals, and can shape the body-at-large’s opinion by giving certain ideas or concepts a favorable boost by a friendly and flattering introduction and presentation, to say nothing of being armed with information ahead of time, such that it can lobby and/or seek to persuade members favorably with regard to what is eventually presented to them.
In Sabino’s case, she offered, at least ostensibly, at least two lines of access or service to the central committee that justified her placement on the executive committee. One of those was her running analysis of legislation pending in Sacramento in which the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee might have some conceivable interest and would potentially take a position on. The other was her status as a board member of the Inland Empire Business Alliance Political Action Committee. In that organization, she is playing a role – a major one it was said – in ascertaining whom the political action committee supported in the March 2024 primary election and whom it is supporting in the upcoming November election.
While the Inland Empire Business Alliance Political Action Committee has in the past established a pattern of endorsing, by a significant margin, more Republicans than Democrats, it has on occasion endorsed Democrats and provided them with money. In some cases, the perception is that those Democrats would have lost if it had not been for the generosity of the Inland Empire Business Alliance and its political action committee arm.
Most recently, in the March 5 primary race, the Inland Empire Business Alliance Political Action Committee came across with support for two Republicans – Ovi Popescu and Rhodes “Dusty” Rigsby – in their electoral efforts for the Loma Linda City Council. They were successful.
Still, the Inland Empire Business Alliance is supporting a handful Democrats. One of those Democrats is Kim Knaus, who is vying for the city council in San Bernardino in the Fifth Ward.
Running against Knaus is Henry Nickel, a Republican. Knaus and Nickel were the top vote-getters on March 5 and will now go head-to-head in November.
It was Sabino’s militating on behalf of Knaus and against Nickel that first brought Sabino’s hidden connection to the Democratic Party under scrutiny. Nickel is not only a Republican, he is a member of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee.
In her role with the Inland Empire Business Alliance and its political action committee, Sabino is active in determining which candidates for local office the organization is going to support, securing money for those candidates and then either conveying it to them directly or using it to run independent expenditure activity to support their candidacies. The research Sabino does for the Inland Empire Business Alliance in determining which candidates it should support includes interviewing the candidates. Despite the consideration that both Sabino and Nickel are members of the Republican Central Committee and that they have been attending monthly meetings of that organization together for the last two years, Sabino did not arrange an interview with Nickel.
While some of the efforts that Sabino had previously made on behalf of Democrats had somehow managed to fly under the radar, that was not the case when the Inland Empire Business Alliance came out in favor of Knaus. This was not Nickel’s first rodeo or walk around the political block. He had previously been on the San Bernardino City Council from 2013 until 2020, having run in three campaigns for that post, and had twice, unsuccessfully, vied for the California Assembly. He was sophisticated enough to look after his own fundraising efforts and to monitor what fundraising his opponents were engaging in. He knew where and to whom he had to appeal for both endorsements and monetary support. One such organization on his radar was the Inland Empire Business Alliance. That it was far more accustomed to supporting Republicans than Democrats had given him hope, if not an outright expectation that he would be a recipient of that organization’s largesse in his run against Knaus.
“I would have been more than willing to be considered by the Inland Empire Business Alliance for an endorsement and any support it would offer to my campaign,” Nickel told the Sentinel.
He was startled to hear that the alliance had come through with a donation to Knaus. As a member of the Republican Central Committee who had heard several presentations from Sabino about where the Inland Empire Business Alliance was vectoring its money, Nickel knew about the role Sabino played with the alliance and that she was at liberty to contact him to hear out what his platform is and ascertain whether the alliance would back him. He said he was disappointed that Sabino did not reach out to him. Then he learned Sabino had gone over to the other side, conveying the Inland Empire Business Alliance‘s money to his Democratic opponent.
In March, the Sentinel became involved, having been informed that a member of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee – Sabino – was militating on behalf of Democrats. The Sentinel made direct inquiries with Sabino. Initially, Sabino, when confronted with documentation that Knaus had received money from the Inland Empire Business Alliance, outright denied that she had any connection to the Inland Empire Business Alliance.
Upon the Sentinel reconfirming Sabino’s role with the Inland Empire Business Alliance, it contacted Sabino again. On that occasion, she began to cry, saying she was overwhelmed with the questions and that she was dealing with the challenge of a deterioration in her father-in-law’s health. She begged off, promising to return the call the following day. She did not make that call and she ducked three further efforts by the Sentinel to reach her at that time.
The following month, she was selected by the Grand Terrace City Council to fill the vacancy within its ranks created by the February resignation of former Councilwoman Sylvia Robles. Sabino is now one of five candidates vying for the three positions on the council, including her own, up for election this year.
There remain a number of individuals involved in local politics who perceive Sabino as an up-and-coming San Bernardino County politician, a potential office-holder for the next twenty to thirty years. Among those are ones who see her as the wave of the future in the GOP – energetic and charismatic Hispanic personages who will break the Democratic Party’s virtual monopoly on Latino voters, allowing the Republican Party to take back control of California.
There are those within the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, Nickel included, who see things somewhat differently. They believe that Sabino is a turncoat, a Democrat wolf wearing Republican wool, who has taken some of that woool and pulled it down over Cothran’s eyes and is utilizing the position of power and trust she has in the Republican Central Committee to boost herself into elected office, from which she intends to spring into higher office still, but not as a Republican and rather as a Democrat. Her efforts on behalf of Knaus is a giveaway that she is ingratiating herself with the Democratic Party while she is working as a Democratic operative within the Republican Party, indeed its inner sanctum, several Republicans say.
And the betrayal goes beyond just Sabino, those members say. Two others on the executive committee have joined Sabino in supporting Knaus. One, surprisingly, is Robert Rego, who was formerly the chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee and is now its treasurer. The other is Dakota Higgins, who is the representative of the First District. Both are supporting Knaus over Nickel.
Nickel told the Sentinel, “It appears council candidate Kim Knaus’s funds are being used to pay for the services of San Bernardino County GOP Treasurer and former Chairman Robert Rego’s company, Parkview Business Services, to have Mr. Rego serve as Knaus’s campaign treasurer.”
Higgins recently commended on an internet posting Sabino for her attendance at a promotional and fundraising event for Knaus.”
On previous occasions, when Knaus’s campaign made text postings and put up photos relating to her campaign and campaign events, occasional indications of Sabino’s and Rego’s involvement in her campaign were made. In short order, however, those postings or photos would be removed, gestures which left those seeking to marshal evidence that key members of the Republican Central Committee had gone over to the other side.
The Sentinel, however, has at this point in its possession clear-cut evidence that Sabino, Rego and Higgins are in the Knaus camp.
Other prominent Republicans are supporting Democrats in this year’s election. Democrat Congresswoman Norma Torres, for example, has garnered the support of several big name Republicans, including ones in the central committee. Her opponent in November is Mike Cargile, a member of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. In the 53rd Assembly District Race, Republican Nick Wilson is going toe-to-toe in November against Michelle Rodriguez, a Democrat. In the March Primary, however, when Norma Torres’ son Robert, another Democrat was vying, there were major Republicans, including San Bernardino County Supervisor and former Republican Central Committee Chairman Curt Hagman and Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren supporting Robert Torres against Wilson.
This year in March, both the Democratic Central Committee and the Republican Central Committee elected its members. The Democratic Central Committee in May installed those new members. The Republicans by tradition do not replace their central committee in San Bernardino County until December. While the current leadership under Cothran appears complacent with regard to the members of the central committee who are abandoning fellow and sister Republicans in favor of Democrats, the new crop of Republican central committee members who will be put into place in December do not appear to be as tolerant of cross party support.
Whether he wins in his Fifth Ward race in San Bernardino next week or not, Nickel will be back as a member of the Republican Central Committee.
He said, “The San Bernardino County GOP bylaws are clear that members of the central committee are subject to removal if advocating for the election of candidates opposing SBCGOP-endorsed candidates. If members of the SBCGOP are in fact advocating for my opponent in the 5th Ward City Council race, they are subject to removal from the San Bernardino County Central Committee.”
Nickel said he wants Sabino, Rego and Higgins, at the very least, bounced out of the central committee.
Republicans are bound by the 11th Commandment which prohibits speaking ill of a fellow Republican.
Cothran has resisted, at least until now, efforts by stalwarts in the central committee have gunning for Sabino’s removal from the executive board and ouster from committee as well.
For more than six months, Sabino has spurned efforts by the Sentinel to have her respond to explain why she is assisting Knaus.
Nickel said he is not sure how Sabino was able to insinuate herself into the central committee.
“I think I first became aware of her when she just popped in and began providing the central committee with information with regard to legislation that she said it was important that the central committee should pay attention to,” he said. “She made a rather quick rise. I don’t think sufficient vetting of her took place. She was given theses significant positions with the central committee almost immediately. One of the things she was doing was reporting on who was getting money from the Inland Empire business Alliance PAC [political action committee]. She would take credit for that.”
The previous talk about Sabino being one of the future faces of the Republican Party in Sacramento has transmogrified into a widespread anticipation among situationally aware Republicans that she is to be rewarded by the Democrats for her penetration of the Republican Party on their behalf with an eventual berth in the Assembly and/or State Senate when she assumes her true colors as a registered Democrat within the next few years.
Cargile told the Sentinel that the entire central committee needed to wake up to what was going on and prevent Democratic operatives from compromising the party.
“We should follow our bylaws,” Cargile said. “If it is clearly established that one of our central committee members is supporting a Democrat in an election involving a Republican candidate, that member should be expelled from the central committee.”
Cargile asked, “What is the point of having a Republican party if our members are supporting the opposition and assisting and promoting Democrat ideas over our own values and policies?”
Cargile said, “I have concerns about the Republican Party and its direction.” He said out of necessity he was running his campaign as a Republican on his own without much support from the central committee.”
Cargile hinted that things would change after the most recent batch of Republcian Central committee members are installed in December.
“You will see some change after we have new people in place come January,” he said.
While several longtime dedicated Republicans in San Benardino County consider Sabino as unworthy of wearing the mantle of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, Earl Warren, Dwight Eisenhower, Robert Taft, Robert LaFolette, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln and to either be a turncoat Republican who has lost the way and is no longer a true-believer or someone who was an imposter or a Democrat-Lover from the start who has, improbably, deceived Cothran to obtain a position from which she is aiming a dagger at the heart of the GOP, it is not only the Republicans in San Bernardino County who are plagued by traitors within their ranks, according to Christian Shaughnessy, one of the trustees of the San Bernardino Democratic Luncheon Club, perhaps the most high-profile chapter of the San Bernardino County Democratic Party.
Shaughnessy announced that this week the San Bernardino Democratic Luncheon Club hd voted unanimously to censure San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran, who was elected mayor two years ago with solid Democratic Party support, for what Shaughnessy called “her perfidious endorsement of the author of our city’s bankruptcy, the racist, corrupt, non-Democrat Jim Penman against a member of her own party, Dr. Treasure Ortiz.” Ortiz, a Democrat, is running against Penman, the former San Bernardino city attorney, for city council in the county seat’s Seventh Ward.

The Intercept this week released a documentary by filmmaker Stuart Harmon cataloging incidents from the experience of four Fontana police officers detailing a level of long-existent distinguishing racism and brutality within the police department which is alleged to continue to plague that agency.
The Intercept, which can be accessed at theintercept.com, is an unabashedly left-wing nonprofit news organization that publishes online articles and podcasts involving what it characterizes as rigorous, adversarial journalism in the public interest.
Harmon’s documentary, titled Fontana PD: Hate Within The Ranks, dwells in the main on recurrent allegations that the department in much of its 72-year history has been plagued with racism. In the main, the documentary focuses on the experiences of three of the department’s so-called “protected minority” officers who were employed with the department between the years of 1996 and 2017, David Moore, Andy Anderson and David Ibarra.
Their narratives were supported in part by a white member of the department, Raymond Schneiders, whose father had previously worked as an officer with the Fontana Police Department in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Schneiders, who had begun his law enforcement career in 1982 with the San Gabriel Police Department, hired on in Fontana, in his father’s footsteps, in 1990. He promoted to a detective in the robbery/homicide division, and remained with the department for 18 years, until his 2008 retirement.
Harmon depicts the difficulty that each of the three said they encountered in finding a meaningful or lasting niche within the department and the glass ceiling that prevented their advancement beyond their relatively lower ranks they were confined to while employed in Fontana. A factor limiting their advancement, Moore, Anderson and Ibarra stated, was their ethnicity. Moore is African American, while Anderson and Ibarra are Hispanic.
Premises laid out with opening of the documentary are that it is true that there is a “code of silence,” that those within the law enforcement professtion who speak out against one police officer or one member of a particular department are considered by their peers to be speaking against all police or all members of that specific department. The documentary takes as truism that to become a member of the law enforcement brotherhood you face the perspective of retaliation if you do not toe the line.
Ibarra, who was with the department from 1996 to 2006, said he came to Fontana to “buy the American Dream” and that he had envisioned “one day, when I retired from the police department, that I would go onto the city council and possibly make a run for the mayor.”
Moore, who had previously worked with the Los Angeles Police Department and came to Fontana in 2000, remaining there until 2017, stated that “as soon as I signed up with the Fontana Police Department I noticed… it was a predominantly Caucasian organization” and that the minorities employed there were “stressed.”
Anderson, who was employed as a police officer in Fontana from 2002 until 2017, noted that after being hired by the Fontana Police Department, he experienced a degree of “culture hock. For a community that’s 70 percent Hispanic, the numbers of the department were really disproportionate,” Anderson said.
A visual displayed following Anderson’s statement quoted the website governing.com’s analysis of Bureau of Justice statistics and census data for the year 2013, which stated, “Fontana had the worst minority representation among cities of more than 100,000 population.”
Ibarra said he early on observed about the department that, “the upper management was all white.” With regard to racism within the Fontana Police Department, Ibarra said, “You can’t see it, but you can certainly feel it, and I felt it.”
On more than one score, the documentary seeks to draw both an analogy with and connection between the police department and the Ku Klux Klan, doing so in a way that is both elliptical and faintly disingenuous through a suspect associative process. The subject of the KKK’s past presence is established with archival photos of rallies, circa the 1970s and 1980s, led by the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, George Pepper, who indeed lived in a somewhat grand home in the City of Fontana that was extant at the time Moore was an officer and which he is caught on video driving past. Moore mentions that his uncle at the time of his hiring in Fontana referenced the community of Fontana’s connection to the Ku Klux Klan. Moore states that he responded to his uncle by telling him that was something in the city’s past. Moore then intimates that after working in the Fontana Department, he had concluded that the KKK’s proliferation in Fontana wasn’t that far in the past.
Moore states in the documentary that “There was a culture of white supremacy in Fontana,” such that “some of that old negativity still permeates the halls of the Fontana Police Department.”
This sentiment is backed by Ibarra, who said that through his experience relatively early on in his time with the department, “You could tell that they didn’t want nothing to do with the Mexican community.”
In attempting to make his case that the department had moved into full Ku Klux Klan or National Socialist mode, Moore charged that the department purposefully overlooked minorities, in particular himself, in favor of white officers with regard to advancing rank-wise in the department.
After noting that he had been chosen to receive the department’s officer of the year award, which provoked, he said, expressions of incredulity from some white officers he said he was close to that they couldn’t believe that the honorific had been bestowed upon “a nigger,” Moore said, “You look at my arrest record. You look at the things that I accomplished. It far surpassed most of my white colleagues. Yet every time a promotion came around, I was skipped over.”
Harmon, using visual means focusing on iconography used by the department together with Moore’s statements, sought to draw a tangent between the symbology used in some of the department’s insignia with Nordic Runes, which, it was implied or directly stated through Moore’s analysis, were tangentially “related to white supremacy.”
Moore, without further elaboration or explanation is heard in the documentary asserting that “this agency is sympathetic and believes in the same ideologies as your street white supremacist gang member.”
The documentary goes on to meld the accusations of overt racism, attitudes of white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan affiliation of some of Fontana’s citizenry, such as Pepper, with the recent misadventure of the department’s former assistant chief, Alan Hostetter. Hostetter departed from the Fontana Department in 2009 to become the police chief of Yorba Linda in Orange County. After his retirement shortly thereafter and becoming abstracted into the beach community lifestyle in San Clemente for nearly a decade, Hostetter with the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020 became a passionate crusader against California Governor Gavin Newsom’s precautionary mandates aimed at arresting the spread of the disease. Hostetter insisted that the coronavirus was being used as a pretext to initiate a set of government-imposed restrictions on the American population which he characterized as a plot involving the Chinese government and American communists to eradicate Americans’ Consitutionally-granted freedoms. As the 2020 election approached, Hostetter’s mission against Newsom’s programs morphed into his advocacy for the reelection of Donald Trump, whom he celebrated as “the greatest president this country ever had.” When Trump was defeated that November, Hostetter became a primary West Coast instigator of the “Stop the Steal Campaign,” traveling twice to Washington, D.C., as part of the contingent intent on preventing Joseph Biden’s succession, once for the “Million Man March” on November 14, 2020 and then again in late December 2020/early 2021 in conjunction with five of his associates from Orange County as part of the effort to convince Congress to not ratify the outcome of the presidential election. On January 5, 2021, appearing with Trump advisor Roger Stone, Hostetter gave an incendiary speech during the Virginia Women for Trump rally that was held near the Supreme Court Building. The next day, he was on the Capitol grounds during the riot that resulting in a breach of the Capitol Building itself. While one of his five associates did enter the Capitol building, Hostetter did not, but he milled about on the Promenade, at first approaching the police line on the west plaza area of the Lower West Terrace, then ascended the stairs immediately adjacent to the construction support for the Inaugural Stage and subsequently walked up to the Upper West Terrace, near where the where rioters were entering the building by means of the Upper West Terrace door. He did not go into the building but remained on or near the Upper West Terrace for at least two hours. Throughout that time, according to federal prosecutors, Hostetter was carrying a hatchet in his backpack. He was indicted and arrested for participating in the January 6 riot in June 2021 and, after more than a two-year delay, went to trial in July 2023, representing himself. Hostetter agreed to forego a jury trial and instead be tried in a bench trial before Federal Judge Royce Lamberth.
Judge Lamberth, serving as both judge and jury, found Hostetter guilty on all four felony counts lodged against him – conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of an official proceeding, including aiding and abetting others engaged in that obstruction and interference; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; and disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building and grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon. Judge Lamberth sentenced him to 11 years and three months in prison.
Moore attributed what had befallen Hostetter as a byproduct of his experience in the crucible of far-right ideology that he implied permeates the Fontana Police Department.
“He’s a person that spiraled out into these extremist views because of the environment he was raised in there,” Moore said in a reference to the Fontana Police Department.
The documentary did not, however, establish any explicit connection between Hostetter and any racist or bigoted policies that proliferated in the department during his leadership.
One of the areas in which Harmon seemed to misread the historical and social context in Fontana consisted of where his documentary seized upon Fontana’s status as the birthplace of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang and what Moore saw as a similarity between elements of the motorcycle gang’s logos and symbols on its paraphernalia to emblems used by the department, with references to commonalities with regard to both Nazi or Neo-Nazi symbols, to further the suggestion that the department has strayed into the province of racial intolerance. In making this point, Moore characterized the Hells Angels as white supremacist in nature. This glossed over the historical reality that during the height of the Ku Klux Klan’s run in Fontana during the 1970s and 1980s, while Pepper was yet a high official in the KKK, the Hells Angels had, in fact, purposefully and actively physically placed themselves during public events in the middle ground between on one side Fontana’s African-American citizens and on the other side members of the Ku Klux Klan and their Neo-Nazi allies in an effort to avert violence.
Moore painted a picture of a sadistic institution in describing the department he had worked for.
“I started hearing complaints about use of force and police brutality,” Moore said. “I personally witnessed when officers were involved in questionable shootings or violent acts. Instead of them being disciplined, they actually were promoted. Very few have garnered discipline from the administration.”
The documentary made much of a distasteful joke relying upon a hackneyed racial association which resulted in a lapse of professionalism that compromised the integrity of the investigation of a murder that took place two decades ago to further establish the premise that the Fontana Police Department is a racist organization. That incident pertained to the circumstances around the autopsy carried out in the aftermath of the July 1994 stabbing death of Jimmy Burelson, a black man who died in an alleyway behind a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. A technician with the department had affixed an eaten chicken leg from his own lunch into the hand of the corpse as a form of crude practical joke.
According to Schneiders, there were officers in the department who resented the manner in which the evidence technician had altered the body and the way it had been found, potentially interfering with evidence relating to the murder. He said the higher-ups in the department had not investigated the technician’s action or disciplined him and that Burelson’s murder case had gone unsolved.
A photograph of Burelson on the autopsy table with his hand apparently clutching the drumstick was widely circulated throughout the department. In the documentary, Moore is heard saying that Burleson’s corpse had been degraded by “the stereotype of Black men eating chicken.”
According to Moore, he at a certain point came to realize “rogue cops, racist cops” were attempting to “push me away from the job that I love.”
Moore claimed that he and Anderson, relatively late during their tenures with the department which ended in 2017, began to make reports of the incidents of police misconduct and racism within the department. This led to trouble.
According to Schneiders, “When you approach your police administration as an officer or any police employee and you expose corruption or this happening, racism, sexism, any of those things, they immediately resent and kill the messenger. They just don’t like whistleblowers, period.”
Ibarra stated “You start going out there and start questioning, soon you’re going to be labeled as a rat. That’s a death wish and if they want to make it rough on you, they will.”
In 2006, Ibarra left Fontana PD, and moved on to take a job with another department.
Moore and Anderson remained in Fontana. Anderson was given a promotion in 2007 to corporal, a position between that of a patrolman and detective. He remained at that level for another ten years.
After nearly a decade-and-a-half with the department, Moore, in tandem with Anderson, grew a bit more aggressive in seeking to prompt reform in the organization with which they were deployed. There efforts were not appreciated and they were not effective, according to the documentary. Moore found himself being investigated, including his department locker being searched and his movements being monitored. Anderson was removed from his narcotics division assignment on a pretext.
Both were accused of misconduct by the department.
At that point, Anderson recognized that he would never realize his intention of being promoted. “I always had hope and ambition that I was going to get up higher in the organization,” Anderson said. “My dreams of making lieutenant, of making captain, and making positive change were gone. They were dead.”
In 2016, Anderson and Moore filed a discrimination lawsuit against the department. In the suit they cited discrimination, being retaliated against and having been skipped over for promotion. After the filing of the suit, according to Moore, the department sought to make an example of the two of them. Citing sleep deprivation and anxiety issues that Anderson was experiencing, he was walked off the job and declared unfit for police work. “I never went back to work another day,” Anderson said.
“They falsely accused me of violating a department policy by leaving my wife on my insurance until I was completely divorced.” Moore said.
The suit they had filed dragged on in the courts for some six years. At the end stage of that litigation, Moore told Harmon, who was working on the documentary, “We are hoping that we’ll encourage other people to speak up, but we’re also hoping to shed light on the process in which it takes to speak up. I still believe in our country, in our law enforcement, and I believe in our criminal justice system.” Nevertheless, Moore acknowledged, he was in a fight with the system.
In April 2024, the case Moore and Anderson brought against the department was settled. No details of the settlement were revealed, and neither Moore nor Anderson, who apparently signed a nondisclosure agreement as part of the settlement, are at this stage willing to speak about what the terms of the settlement are.

By Carlos Avalos
At least some of the ground covered in Stuart Harmon’s documentary, titled “Fontana PD: Hate Within The Ranks” produced in cooperation with The Intercept and posted at theintercept.com for free viewing this week was previewed over the years by parallel articles and letters to the editor which ran in the Fontana Herald News and the San Bernardino County Sentinel.
One of these was a letter to the editor that ran in the Fontana Herald News on October 22, 2015 under the heading “Fontana is still affected by racism.” This showed the Fontana Police Department at the heart of these ongoing issues. This set the stage for a deeper dive into the department’s troubled culture.
Next, on August 22, 2016, the Sentinel reported on unresolved questions surrounding a series of in-custody deaths in 2002 involving the Fontana Police Department. Three men—Ismael Banda, David Michael Tyler, and Fermin Rincon—died under circumstances alleged to involve excessive force by police. Investigations cleared the officers, but some former officers and community members have criticized a “code of silence” that may have suppressed accountability (https://sbcsentinel.com/2016/08/14-years-later-questions-remain-over-spate-of-fpd-in-custody-deaths/).
The Sentinel then on September 4, 2016 published details alleged by two Fontana police officers who claim the FPD harbors systemic racism. They report instances of racial discrimination, harassment, and a hostile work environment, with minority officers allegedly facing unfair treatment compared to their counterparts. The officers assert that complaints of racism have been repeatedly ignored by department leadership. This raises concerns about the internal culture within the Fontana Police Department (https://sbcsentinel.com/2016/09/two-fontana-cops-allege-fpd-is-riddled-with-racism/).
On September 17, 2016 the Sentinel wrote about former Fontana Police Department “Officer of the Year” Dave Ibarra who resigned due to a perceived cultural clash within the department (https://sbcsentinel.com/2016/09/culture-clash-sent-former-fpd-officer-of-the-year-packing/). The officer, who had a background in the military, reportedly faced difficulties adjusting to what he described as the department’s leadership style and internal culture. His departure highlighted ongoing issues within the department related to management practices and morale among officers.
On January 1, 2017, the Sentinel the Sentinel published a report on the contrasting tributes given to two Fontana police officers who died in the line of duty. While both made significant sacrifices, the department and community offered different levels of recognition, sparking debate over how fallen officers are honored and remembered (https://sbcsentinel.com/2017/01/two-fallen-officers-accorded-differing-levels-of-honor-remembrance-respect/). This disparity has raised questions about standards of commemoration and respect within the department.
On February 6, 2017, the Sentinel reported on longstanding allegations of evidence tampering within the FPD, focusing on a 1994 incident involving the death of Jimmy Earl Burelson (https://sbcsentinel.com/2017/02/23-years-on-fpds-evidence-tampering-under-scrutiny-2/).
In April of 2017, the Sentinel published an article about serious allegations against the FPD, focusing on claims of racism, excessive force, and evidence tampering (From One Reporter’s Notebook | SBCSentinel). A notable case involves the death and alleged post-mortem desecration of Jimmy Earl Burelson, which has raised questions about the department’s culture and professionalism. His stepsister, Lurline Davis Jimmy Burelson closest relative called for an investigation and reform. Her brother’s body was reportedly desecrated with a chicken bone placed in his hand while dead on the autopsy table, sparking accusations of racial insensitivity and misconduct. This incident  resurfaced amid new legal scrutiny, raising questions about evidence handling and integrity within the department.
On August 23, 2017, the Sentinel reported on a terminated FPD officer who claimed he was fired for whistleblowing on unethical practices within the department (https://sbcsentinel.com/2017/08/terminated-whistleblowing-fontana-police-officer-seeking-reinstatement-tuesday/). He was seeking reinstatement, alleging his dismissal was retaliatory after he reported misconduct by fellow officers. His case is set for review by the Fontana City Council, and his legal battle highlights ongoing tensions within the department concerning transparency and internal accountability.
On September 13, 2019, the Sentinel reported on Jimmy Earl Burelson’s family filing a complaint against San Bernardino County and Fontana officials, alleging his body was desecrated by Fontana police officers in 1994 (https://sbcsentinel.com/2019/09/sb-city-officials-resolve-to-brass-out-whatever-opposition-muscupiabe-residents-show-toward-welfare-building-in-their-neihborhood/). The family’s attorney, Monrow Mabon, claimed police staged a photo of Burelson with a chicken leg to mock him and covered up details surrounding his death. The family seeks a renewed investigation, citing new evidence of misconduct and systemic racial discrimination within the police force.
On June 5, 2020, The Sentinel reported on how former Fontana Police Chief Rod Jones allegedly helped his son, Jeremiah Jones, secure a job with the Fontana Police Department despite Jeremiah’s criminal record, including accusations of rape (https://sbcsentinel.com/2020/06/father-helped-son-now-arrested-for-rape-land-fpd-job/). Jeremiah’s hiring has raised questions about possible favoritism and ethics violations, as his father may have influenced the process. The article highlighted concerns about internal hiring practices within the department, with implications for transparency and accountability.
On August 14, 2020, the Sentinel reported on critiques of the FPD’s longstanding lack of diversity, noting a culture dominated by white males and instances of racial bias (https://sbcsentinel.com/2020/08/four-corners/). The department has reportedly struggled to retain minority officers and has seen minimal diversity improvement over the years. Allegations include a biased hiring process, nepotism, and a history of racial discrimination, with examples of discriminatory incidents and a militaristic approach toward minority community members. Photos and historical decor within the station reportedly reflect and reinforce this exclusionary culture.
On September 18, of 2020, the Sentinel reported on Fontana Police Chief Billy Green asserting he is not swayed by external pressures in managing the department amid critiques of bias and diversity issues (https://sbcsentinel.com/2020/09/fpd-chief-green-isnt-inveigled/). He defended the department’s efforts to maintain community relations, arguing that a zero-tolerance policy against misconduct is in place and that hiring practices aim for diversity. Green emphasizes his commitment to transparency and accountability, despite allegations of racial discrimination and past incidents within the department.
On October 22, 2021, the Sentinel reported on consultants on the FPD in 2021 recommended increasing ethnic and racial diversity among its ranks to better reflect the city’s demographics (https://sbcsentinel.com/2021/10/consultants-assessment-calls-for-greater-ethnic-racial-diversity-within-the-fontana-police-department/). The assessment highlighted a significant gap between the department’s racial makeup and the community’s, suggesting that improved diversity could enhance public trust and effectiveness. Recommendations included adjusting recruitment, hiring, and retention practices to attract a broader range of applicants from various backgrounds. Since 2021 The FPD whistleblowers have been fighting their case and the Sentinel’s reporting on the FPD continues with this new documentary released.

An intriguing scenario is playing out in the single board race being held in the Adelanto Elementary School District this year, one which is testing several competing concepts and/or constructs, including how far the First Amendment principle of free speech and expression extend before being curtailed by the restrictions of contract law.
Krause, a graduate of Northern Alabama University, participated in local school education programs as an undergraduate. Upon graduation in 2000, he began work as a stockbroker and bond salesman, but left that profession to enlist in the U.S. Army after September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. He served as a medic with the 11th Armored Blackhorse Cavalry Regiment, in which capacity he was eventually stationed at Fort Irwin. While at Fort Irwin, he obtained his emergency teaching credential to fill the gap in available substitute teachers in the Silver Valley School District, which serves the children of soldiers stationed at Fort Irwin. Upon his discharge from the Army in 2004, he used the GI Bill to further his education, achieving his master’s degree in management at Webster University and his teaching credential by 2007, whereupon he went to work as a teacher in the Victor Valley Union High School District, teaching at Silverado High School. After four years there, in 2011, he transitioned into educational administration, going to work with the Baker Unified School District as its chief business officer. In 2013, he jumped at the chance to go from overseeing a district budget of $2.7 million with an average daily attendance of less than 400 at Baker Unified to becoming the associate superintendent with the South Whittier School District, with a budget of $34 million and an average daily attendance of 3,300. Thereafter, he worked for more than three years with the California Association of School Business Officials. In 2018, he returned to the role of school district administrator as the assistant superintendent for administrative services with the Anaheim Elementary School District, which had 23 schools and a budget of $230 million. In October 2020, he was lured to the Adelanto Elementary School District, which was in a pinch and needed to fill the position of assistant superintendent of business services. His performance in that role was exemplary, so much so that in July 2022, he was chosen as the interim superintendent to replace Dr. Kennon Mitchell. In January 2023, halfway through the 2022-23 academic year, the board voted to make Krause the full-fledged superintendent.
Krause remained on what appeared to be positive terms with the board, which suffered the loss of Holly Eckes in February 2023 and filled that vacancy with the appointment of Miguel Soto the following month.
In January 2024, Krause resisted what he said were actions by the board collectively or requests by board members individually that were illegal, constituted graft or were conflicts of interest which he deemed to be contrary to the interests of the district’s students and the district’s overall educational mission. When members of the board redoubled those requests, according to Krause, he again objected. On April 9, during a closed-door session of the school board, by a 4-to-1 vote, with members La Shawn Love-French, Christine Turner, Miguel Soto and Christina Bentz prevailing and Stephanie Webster dissenting, Krause was placed on administrative leave. John Albert, the assistant superintendent for human resources was appointed as the interim superintendent.
In June, the district and Krause signed a separation agreement, effective June 30, by which he was to continue to receive his salary as superintendent through to the end of 2024 and was to continue to receive for six months or until he found employment elsewhere the health benefits he had been provided as an employee, which included coverage for his family.
In July, Krause, a resident of Adelanto within the School District’s Area 1, filed for candidacy in the November election for the District Area 1 position on the board, held by Turner, which was up for election. The registrar of voters office determined he had met the requirement to qualify his candidacy. Turner likewise qualified her candidacy for reelection.
On October 18, Dominic Quiller, the district’s legal counsel, informed Krause by letter that he was being given notice that the district was Making “recission [sic] of your June 30, 2024 ’Separation Agreement And General Release’ with your former employer, Adelanto Elementary School District, demand for reimbursement of all benefits and other remuneration obtained by you since the execution of said agreement, and demand that you immediately withdraw from the race for a district board seat. Failure to cooperate will result in immediate litigation.
Quiller referenced the non-disparagement clause of the separation agreement, which states, “Neither Krause nor [the] District shall make any disparaging or derogatory remarks to or about operations, agents, board members or assigns… including but not limited to disparaging postings or statements on social media or in any other venue regarding the other party. Krause and the district also agree to take no action which is intended or would reasonably be expected to harm the other party’s reputation or interests individually or collectively, even if truthful, or which would reasonably to lead to unwanted or unfavorable publicity to the other party, regarding issues related to Krause’s employment with the district. This shall include statements made to the press, in social media, during public comment period in social media, or any other statement that is published to anyone other than Krause or the district.”
Quiller’s letter goes on to state, “As you are aware, you have made several comments in public forums that are disparaging to the district. This includes publicly discussing events that occurred during your employment, which you pronounced reflected badly on the district – in other words, disparaging the district’s reputation.”
In the letter, Quiller further charged Krause with having violated no-contact clause contained in the separation agreement in which he was enjoined “to stay away and not come upon district property nor contact district employees during work hours, or trustees in any form or manner whatsoever, except as may be necessary to participate in public meetings of the board of trustees as allowed by law or to exercise any parental rights he may have for his child[ren] while attending district’s schools.”
In the letter, Quiller asserts that Krause’s termination “was caused by your unfettered harassment of your subordinates.”
Krause’s candidacy for the public office of Adelanto Elementary School District board member constitutes a violation of the separation agreement, according to Quiller. He goes on to state, “Even though you agreed to discontinue all contact and relationship with this district, you ignored your promise and entered the race for a board seat, This filing evidences your intent to “come upon district property [and] contact district employees.”
Moreover, according to Quiller, by posting campaign signs, Krause is imposing upon district employees the burden of having to think about him. Quiller notes that Krause “recently placed one of your campaign signs at the Mojave Drive exit of the 395 Hwy. This exit is not in the Trustee Area – Area 1 – in which you are running for a board seat. Instead, you are aware that several employees who previously submitted complaints against you, live off and near that exit and would see your campaign sign.”
As a consequence of Krause’s actions, Quiller informed him in the letter, the district is discontinuing the payment of his monthly salary through the end of 2024and the provision of hi his health and welfare benefits until the end of the year and wants him to pay back all of the money he has been paid since his official departure from the district on June 30 and for him to reimburse the district’s coverage of his and his family’s medical benefits during that time.
According to Krause, while he was in the capacity of district superintendent, he had information that board members were being benefited, both financially and personally, by the use of district resources and personnel that were not authorized by action of the full board and which, if known to the public, would have damaged the reputation of those benefiting. He provided the Sentinel with the names and/or identities of district personnel who are able to verify that the diversion of district resources took place and that the district sustained increases in the overtime that was paid because the district personnel needed extra time on the clock to finish the work not completed while the board members were being catered to.
According to Krause, when he moved to at first quietly inquire into the diversion of district resources and personnel, he was told, he said to “stand down, do not worry about it and leave it alone.”
In that particular case, Krause said, “I dropped the matter because I knew what had happened to all of the prior superintendents before me.”
Ultimately, when he took up other similar matters, Krause said, he ran afoul of four of the district’s five board members, leading to his suspension and eventual separation.”
His board candidacy, Krause maintains, is part of his effort to redress those issues he experienced as superintendent which the political alliances on the board would not allow him to redress.
This week, the Sentinel sought to catch up with Quiller and explore with him the competing concepts and/or constructs embodied in his October 18 letter relating to the First Amendment principle of free speech and expression and the restrictions that were contained in Krause’s separation agreement with the district, most specifically whether a contract or agreement can be entered into which abridges one or both of the parties’ Constitutional rights.
The Sentinel asked Quiller to clarify if it was his contention that Krause’s board candidacy platform and campaign statements violated the non-disparagement clause contained in the separation agreement, thereby abrogating it and that Krause, simply by running for the board, disparaged the district.
The Sentinel sought to zero in on the absolute applicability of the several provisions contained in the separation agreement, including whether such an agreement can impose a binding limitation on one or both of the parties’ Constitutional rights and if, there comes a conflict between a provision of a contract or agreement with Constitutionally guaranteed rights of an individual, under the law as Quiller in his capacity as a lawyer understood it, which would prevail, the Constitution or the letter of the contract.
The Sentinel asked Quiller if someone can be deemed to be in violation of a contract for exercising his/her Constitutional rights and whether it was his contention that the separation agreement between Krause and the district, primarily by virtue of its non-disparagement clause, prohibited Krause from running for a position on the school board.
The Sentinel asked Quiller how precisely Krause disparaged the district and whether he could provide specific examples of Kraus having done so.
The Sentinel also sought to explore Quiller and the district’s position as to how disparagement is to be defined within the context of the issues that involve the district and Krause and whether there was mutual applicability of the non-disparagement clause. The Sentinel asked if Krause’s statements on the campaign trail could be legitimately construed as disparaging, either of the district or his opponent, that being Board Member Turner. The Sentinel sought from Quiller whether he believed Turner might be deemed to have disparaged Krause by her campaign statements and platform and whether Quiller’s October 18 letter could also be construed to have disparaged Krause.
The Sentinel further sought to involve Quiller in a dialogue pertaining to a set of intriguing journalistic subjects, extending to how free a former employee of a governmental entity is or should be to make use of inside or confidential information obtained in his/her role as an employee in either the context of a reform effort or political campaign. Along this tangent, the Sentinel challenged Quiller as to whether his October 18 letter interfered impermissibly in a political campaign.
The Sentinel noted in its email to Quiller that the most pointed statements made by Krause in the course of the campaign were relatively benign observations pertaining to stalled contract negotiations and the district’s lack of administrative continuity extending back over the last decade.
The Sentinel asked Quiller if it was his contention that Krause noting that the district has not provided raises to faculty for more than two years running was a disparagement of the district
The Sentinel asked Quiller if it was his contention that Krause stating that the district has had eight superintendents in the last ten years disparaged the district
The Sentinel asked Quiller if it was his contention that Krause by stating that if elected he would use his in-depth knowledge of the district gleaned from his time as superintendent to seek to make changes which he felt would enhance the district’s educational mission engaged in disparagement of the district.
The Sentinel moved on to those subjects relating to the district dwelling below the surface that have not been overtly explored in the course of the campaign but which it has now been suggested might explain why the district has taken an aggressive stance toward Krause. Without engaging in hard specifics, the Sentinel noted that the separation agreement contains language which alluded to “guilt or liability on the part of either party,” implying that such guilt exists. The Sentinel asked Quiller if his October 18 letter “was intended as a cudgel, perhaps, to dissuade Mr. Krause from revealing any details relating to that guilt.” Noting that logic dictates that Quiller, as the district counsel is aware of the circumstance relating to district board members having been provided with accommodations that were not given approval by the full board during the course of public meetings or public hearings, the Sentinel asked Quiller if he could make a statement cogently and convincingly refuting that such acts of graft or conflict of interest involving at least some of its board member took place Mr. Krause was in place as superintendent.
Noting that it appeared Krause had been terminated earlier this year because of his opposition to actions or requests by the board collectively or board members individually that were illegal or constituted graft or conflicts of interest which he deemed to be contrary to the interests of the district’s students and the district’s overall educational mission, the Sentinel asked Quiller if it had been his intent, as the board’s legal representative, to prevent an exposure of the facts pertaining to that graft/conflict of interest in writing his October 18 letter?
The Sentinel angled at the blackmail element contained within the October 18 letter of rescission sent to Krause. “If Mr. Krause were to offer you and the district an explicit guarantee that he will remain silent with regard to these acts involving graft and/or conflicts of interest, would you rescind your October 18 letter abrogating the separation agreement between Mr. Krause and the district?” the Sentinel asked Quiller.
The Sentinel offered Quiller an opportunity to deny that he was knowledgeable about instances of graft and/or conflicts of interest on the part of the board members he represents.
It has been suggested that Quiller’s October 18 letter was a bald-faced effort to assist Ms. Turner’s reelection campaign and that Quiller had written the letter as a political favor to Turner and perhaps other board members as a gesture that would ingratiate him with those in the decision-making positions with the district, ensuring that he and his firm, McCune & Harber maintain their $460,000 per year contract for the provision of legal services.
The Sentinel requested of Quiller a convincing refutation of that accusation and asked whether his letter was a prohibited use of district resources in a political effort.
Quiller did not respond to the Sentinel’s initial email.
As the Sentinel’s deadline approached, it sought once more to induce Quiller to respond to the Sentinel’s inquiries. Quiller at that point responded with a proforma email in which said he was to “be out of the office in depositions and will return November 5, 2024” and thanking the Sentinel “for your understanding and patience.”

Yucaipa authorities are refusing to discuss what is rumored to be Premium Land Development’s decision to walk away from the Serrano Estates project more than 18 months after it was given narrow approval by the city council amid multiple charges of improprieties involving the developer and city officials.
The project was given a 3-to-2 approval by the city council on April 17, 2023 after the planning commission the previous year had rejected the project, which was not provided with a comprehensive environmental impact report despite involving an intensity of land use greater than what was envisioned for the property in the city’s general plan.
A lack of transparency with regard to the current situation has triggered widespread speculation about what is afoot. One unconfirmed report is that the city, after kowtowing to the project proponent, Craig Heaps, on multiple occasions in 2022 and 2023 by suspending several regulations and standards that would have otherwise applied to the property, is now going to impose on him a substantial monetary penalty for nonperformance after he provided assurances the development program for 51 units on 52 acres would have progressed toward substantial or full completion by now.
Other reports had it that Heaps never intended to perform, but was merely seeking an entitlement to develop the property, and that city officials were aware of his agenda all along, having abetted him in it.
Despite repeated efforts by the Sentinel to learn from City Manager Chris Mann, Yucaipa Director of Development Services Fermin Preciado and Yucaipa City Planner Ben Matlock what the actual status of the project is, City Hall is electing, at present, to keep the public in the dark.
The project, located in the city district referred to as the north bench, was set to be constructed on 52 acres along the east side of Yucaipa Ridge Road, north of Ivy Avenue, directly adjacent to Quartz Street and Crystal Street. The project site consists of undeveloped property and was under the city’s general plan slated for single family homes on lot sizes of at least one acre in conjunction with the city’s Rural Living or RL-1 zoning. The property falls within Yucaipa’s Custom Home (CH) Overlay District, in which cookie-cutter subdivisions typical of urban areas are discouraged. The area is likewise surrounded by low density zones.
There was concern on the part of many people that what Heaps and his company, Premium Land Development, were attempting to do was to get the city to okay the project, which was to confine 51 homes to 51 lots compressed on 27 acres, such that the lots to be developed would be more like 23,061.17 square feet or 0.529 of an acre, using questionable standards that were far more favorable to Heaps than the community. An acre consists of 43,560 square feet.
Heaps and Premium Land Development had also included in the project a 52nd lot consisting of 12 acres, on which it was not really clear whether, perhaps, another home would be built, and 13 acres of “open space.”
Instead of requiring that Premium Land Develpment perform an environmental impact report in order to obtain certification for the project, city officials agreed to sign off on the proposal using a far less exacting process known as mitigated negative declaration.
Under the California Environmental Quality Act, the impacts of a development project must be evaluated as part of the approval process for that undertaking before the proponent can be clearance to proceed. Different types of certification can be made, some of which are more intensive than others. Those include, at the most intensive end of the scale, an environmental impact report, followed by an environmental impact study, then an environmental impact assessment, after which is a mitigated negative declaration and at the low end, a negative declaration.
Those differing types of certifications are normally performed by an independent entity and paid for by the proponent, with the expense greatest at the top end of the scale and lowest at the bottom.
An environmental impact report is an involved study of the project site, the project proposal, the potential and actual impacts the project will have on the site and surrounding area in terms of all conceivable issues, including land use, water use, air quality, potential contamination, noise, traffic, and biological and cultural resources. It specifies in detail what measures can, will and must be carried out to offset those impacts. A mitigated negative declaration is a far less exacting size-up of the impacts of a project, by which the panel entrusted with the city’s ultimate land use authority, in this case the city council, issues a declaration that all adverse environmental impacts from the project will be mitigated, or offset, by the conditions of approval of the project imposed upon the developer.
The approach Heaps was taking and which the city was allowing him to proceed with left open the possibility that in the future, when memories have faded and there have been personnel changes on the city council, Premium Land and Heaps or their corporate successor will come in with another proposal to develop the 12-acre Lot 52 or perhaps the combined 25 acres consisting of Lot 52 and the area’s open space.
The overwhelming majority of the public speakers at the April 17 special meeting went on record against the project, including former Planning Commission Chairwoman Denise Work and former Planning Commissioner Dennis Miller. Only two public speakers expressed support of the proposal. There was substantial sentiment among the members of the public present that Premium Land Development and Heaps were not living up to either the spirit or the letter of the one-acre lot minimum inherent in RL-1 zoning with the way the lots were arranged on the Serrano Estates tract map. The meeting had the distinction of being the first major test of what developmental standards the City of Yucaipa will live up to under Chris Mann’s guidance as city manager. Mann had been installed as city manager a little more than three months previously, when the 3-to-2 council majority of Justin Beaver, Bobby Duncan and Matt Garner had forced Mann’s predecessor as city manager, Ray Casey, to resign. Contained in the citizen opposition at the April 17, 2023 meeting was the belief by some that members of the city council were on the take, receiving bribes from the development community in exchange for accommodating construction project proposals. This dovetailed with the outrage over the Casey firing, as Mann, through his company, Mann Communications, served as as representative for multiple companies in the construction industry. Mann at one time was the chief political strategist at O’Reilly Public Relations working upon obtaining land-use entitlements.
Seven days after the meeting at which the Serrano Estates project was being considered, on April 24, recall petitions signed by 193 city residents would be turned over to the city clerk, qualifying an effort to removed Beaver, Duncan and Garner from office.
Despite what appeared to be the overwhelming citizen resistance to the project, the 3-to-2 vote in favor of the project took place. Beaver, perhaps mindful that he was already on thin ice because of the Casey sacking, joined with Councilman Jon Thorp in opposing the project. Duncan and Garner joined with Venable in giving the project a thumbs up.
Some suggested that Beaver was in support of the project as well, but that he voted against it in the knowledge that it had three votes without his support.
After the passage of a year-and-a-half, the project has not come to fruition and work is emanating, from a source apparently close to City Hall but which has not been identified, that Heaps and Premium Land Development are not going to proceed with the project.
The Sentinel sought to confirm that Heaps and Premium Land Development were pulling the plug on the project, but no one in a position to know – Heaps, Mann, Preciado or Matlock – are talking.
Of note is that Heaps is now identified as being the principal in an outfit calling itself West Coast Entitlement, LLC.
Accordingly, the Sentinel sought from Mann whether Premium Land Development’s entitlement to build remains intact, such that it is just going to hand that entitlement off to another entity and, if so, to whom. The Sentinel further sought from Mann if he knew how much Heaps and Premium Land Development were selling that entitlement for.
Mann did not respond to the Sentinel’s inquiry.
The Sentinel also sought to find out if Heaps had perhaps temporized and thereby allowed a deadline by which he was supposed to achieve some milestone elapse and, if so, what it was he was supposed to do that he didn’t do. The Sentinel failed in finding out what that failure consisted of if in fact there was such a failure.
The Sentinel also looked into the report that the city had assessed a monetary penalty against Heaps and/or Premium Land Development and how much that penalty was. Likewise the Sentinel was able to make no definitive determination.
The Sentinel was able to research, however, some of the requirements that Premium Land Development was supposed to live up to, which included paying to the city $1,207,229.73 in development impact fees, consisting of drainage facilities fees of $401,745.42; traffic facilities fees of $532,144.20; public facilities fees of $73,675.62; fire facilities fees of $46,726.71 and park facilities fees of $152,937.78.
In addition, Heaps and Premium Land Development were responsible for fees to be collected by other agencies, such as the Yucaipa Valley Water District and Yucaipa Calimesa School District beyond the $1,207,229.73 to be paid to the city, which the Sentinel was unable to quantify. Moreover, the company was required to make make good on fees imposed by the California Department of Fish & Game.